Reverend Monsignor Anthony Kornu, Vicar General of the Catholic Diocese, Ho, on Saturday urged Christian churches to allow their members to be made chiefs.
He said it offered them a golden opportunity of “purifying and christianizing” kingship and that “to allow such a precious opportunity to slip by will be a miserable failure, with regard to the urgent need for the evangelization of cultures.”
Monsignor Kornu said this at a day’s capacity building on “chieftaincy and rulership institution in Ghana” for Chiefs and Queens in the Norvisi Development Union (NORDU) at Shia in the Ho Municipal area.
It was organized by Ho-based Centre for Ewe Language and Cultural Research (CELCUR).
He observed that the main challenge hindering Christians from becoming chiefs was the rituals associated with it, but said that could be handled through dialogue between Christians and Traditional authorities.
Monsignor Kornu said the pouring of libation for instance was “a controversial topic” which could not be “condemned outright as incompatible in any form of Christianity,” noting that it is not “peculiar to Africa religions, but also part and parcel of Judea-Christian tradition”.
He said issues of periodic food and blood sacrifices and ancestral stools and worship could be looked at and re-interpreted for Christians, who are qualified to be made chiefs so they could rule society with the fear of God.
Togbe Kotoku XI, Paramount Chief of Kpenoe and an Evangelist, told the Ghana News Agency that he faced no challenge in his 12 years as a Chief.
“It is basically a leadership role and not so much of rituals,” he said.
Togbe Kotoku said he managed to maintain peace in the area, establish an education fund, a kindergarten block and developed a water system and also changed some outmoded customs.
Togbe Yao Adiko-Mensa, Executive Director of CELCUR said chieftaincy is a profession and called on chiefs and traditional rulers to act as such.
The participants also discussed the relevance of widowhood rites.
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